Dear god, did we actually get an episode out? Oh wait, that's right, you have no idea what I'm talking about.

So to give a very brief overview of what I'm talking about here, we're talking podcast. Critical Hit is a panelist show, where we get 2 to 3 professionals from the gaming industry into a Skype conference and essentially let them loose on eachother. The point here is that old-school interviews saturate the media scene, and it's time for something more constructive. We bring developers, marketing specialists, media personalities, and the like together to put the important issues on the table.

Our fourth episode, about game balance, was recorded last night, and hot damn is it epic! We were fortunate enough to be joined by three excellent panelists.

First, we had David Sirlin. Sirlin is a producer and developer, currently with Backbone Entertainment, who has, frankly, a gross amount of experience in the fighting game scene. He is one of the original founders of the Evolution Fighting Series, author of the book Playing to Win, and is currently working on projects such as Puzzle Fighter HD, and Street Fighter Super Turbo HD. For more information on Sirlin and what he does, check out his website, www.sirlin.net

Our other two panelists are somewhat of a 'dynamic duo' (they live together, buttsecks-free I'm told). Isaiah "Izzy" Cartwright and Ryan "Morello" Scott are both employees at ArenaNet, working on GuildWars. Izzy is the official skill balancer, among other responsibilities, in charge of making sure that the PvP experience in GuildWars is as enjoyable as possible. Morello, who used to work side-by-side with Izzy on skill balance, is now working on GW PvE, and is a FPS fanboy at heart.

You can download this episode of Critical Hit by clicking on this link: Download Episode 4 NOW! (website coming soon!)

If you're interested in digging into the archives, you can grab Episode 1 or Episode 3 (episode 2 was an attempt at adding video and it faaaailed in a technically epic way)